


For Whatever We Lose

by Melospiza_melodia



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Claustrophobia, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Canon, mentions of Ezri Dax, spoilers for post-canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-20 07:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11916438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melospiza_melodia/pseuds/Melospiza_melodia
Summary: A follow up to the concepts of Enigma Tales, but not necessarily sticking to its details.  Garak and Julian go to the beach to try to heal away from the pressures of city life.  It has been over a year since Julian’s accident, and Garak is beginning to lose hope.





	1. Chapter 1

    “Any change?”  Kelas’ voice was thin and tinny through the communicator.

“None,”  Garak said, keeping his voice carefully level.  “Absolutely none.”

Kelas fretted on the other end of the signal.  “Maybe I should have come with you.”

“No—our district could hardly afford to lose its best doctor and only minister at once.”

“Always the flatterer.  Always the servant.”

Garak didn’t bother to respond to that.  The waves beside him heaved into the silence.

Finally, Kelas sighed.  “At least try to relax, Elim.  Keep me posted if anything happens—good or ill.”

Garak tucked the communicator into his pocket, eyes trained firmly on the sea.  The tide was rising, its foam scuttling further and further inland.  A mist of brine was painting the sky a frail pink.  He inhaled once, treasuring the salty scent, the sense of openness, before heading back to the dunes.

Kelas had sent him out of the house less than a week ago, but already his path was well-worn in the sand.  He found Julian just as he had left him, curled in his chair like a hermit crab within its shell.  (Garak tried to ignore the comparison—it was one the good doctor had taught him.)  His eyes were gray and distant, his head bowed, and his chest rose and fell in time to the sea.  Biting down disappointment and a mouthful of sand (they tasted the same), Garak led him back to the small cabin and began the same routine they had established every night, every morning:

He would walk up to the replicator, ordering a Tarkalean tea (extra sweet).  Then he would sit beside Julian and say in Standard, “Would you care for some Tarkalean tea?  It is quite good.”

And every day Julian would say nothing.  Garak would leave the mug beside him and rise to grab a cup of rokassa juice.  He would proceed to talk about some inane topic, some matter of state, and send glances Julian’s way, waiting for a flicker of recognition.

Back home, Kelas would join in, adding updates on the infirmary, on the latest medical discoveries.  He would send Garak little glances of the eye that read:   _ Don’t lose hope.  Miracles can happen yet.   _ Upon most occasions, those glances would have an underlying:   _ And if they don’t, you must move on.  _ Kelas was typically good at hiding the jealousy and, as that decreased, the concern.  Some days, they would discuss literature.  Garak tried to feed Kelas the most ridiculous combination of truth and fantasy when he spoke of Terran works, hoping to bait Julian into interrupting.  As it was, he was lucky if the man even looked his way. When he did, his eyes were dull and vacant as a vacuum, and Garak tried to ignore the way they pulled at his heart like twin black holes.

Tonight, Garak spoke only briefly of his first visit to this beach.  The story was mere fantasy, but as always it had an inner current of truth.  Then he tucked Julian and himself into separate beds and stared at the ceiling, willing it not to creep closer to him as he slept.  In response, it loomed over his head, waiting for his concentration to slip, for his mind to show a crack, for his heart to stutter so it could swoop in and engulf him in the scent of crusted brine and rotten fish, so strong that the scent was solid, was rock, was crystalline, and he was drowning drowning, drowning as the world was reduced to the size of a sand grain with him trapped inside…

He took a deep breath.  The ceiling retreated, contrite.

    When he was certain that Julian’s breathing had deepened and the waves were loud enough, he allowed himself a moan of frustration and anger.   _ Of all the people this could have happened to, it had to be Julian. _

__ He tried to block out his own voice cautioning,  _ “Sentiment is the greatest weakness of all.”   _ The syllables were still resounding in his ears when he finally found sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

    When he awoke, the sun was already cresting the horizon and the tide was falling.  Garak walked over to the seaward window, remembering what Kelas had said to him to justify this vacation.   _“The change of scenery will do you good—will do you both good.”_ Garak bit back a chuckle—perhaps all doctors of every type, of every species, were fundamentally the same.  It was nearly the exact advice Ezri Dax had given him last time his claustrophobia had reared its head on DS9.

    The routine went quickly this morning:  the tea thunked onto the table, the rokassa juice joining mere seconds after.  Unbidden, Julian reached for the tea.  Garak cast him a surprised glance, but said nothing.  The doctor’s eyes were still vacant as ever, and the walls seemed to be moving in.

    Two minutes more, and they were at the edge of the surf.  Garak chose to bring Julian close to the water; the lowering tide proved to be gentle and slow compared to its twin.  He stayed by Julian’s side until the sun had fully breached the horizon. Then he left Julian staring at the sky, and he waded out into the surf, watching the shoals of small fish and sea newts that darted through the emerging tide pools.  Occasionally, a brown shorebird would swoop down and grab a mouthful of them. It would then hover overhead, emitting a thin, silver cry.  The sound weaved in and out of the pounding surf like a needle.  It was so entrancing Garak almost missed the other noise underlying the waves.

    “ _...Molly...horrible thing which raced sideways while…”_

Garak turned to Julian.  The human’s gaze had sifted downward to the sand, and his lips were moving as if in calculation.

    A wave crashed into Julian’s gaze, grabbing the shoreline in desperation.  It dragged away sand and shells with gray fingers and a pattering, rasping sound.  Julian sprang up abruptly, and Garak ran towards the chair, biting down a cry of surprise.

    Julian raced away from him, chasing the retreating wave with wavering feet.  His limbs, always too gangly for his frame, seemed to be made of seaweed, flying in every direction, buckling where the water touched.  He was kneeling in the froth, then bowing into the waves.  He was up to his knees, his waist, and his head went under just when Garak entered the cold surf.

    Shouting wordlessly, Garak dove after him.  Stinging water engulfed his eyes and drowned his hearing, but his momentum carried true; his hands found Julian’s collar. He dragged Julian upright, sour water dripping off both of their faces.  The current dragged at their torsos.  Julian looked at Garak, eyes wide in—was that desperation?  Garak stared back, hardly daring to hope.  “May,” Julian coughed.  “May.”

    “What?”  Not his most eloquent, but Julian would forgive him.   _He always has.  
_

    “May,” he repeated insistently, and dove back under just as another wave retreated and beat against their backs.

    Garak dug his toes into shore, struggling to haul Julian upright, then struggling just to keep them from being tugged to sea like driftwood.  Finally, the wave abated. Garak dragged them both to the soaked sand and collapsed, hacking up water he couldn’t recall swallowing.

    When his vision stopped tunneling, he found himself sprawled on a shoal of broken shells, supporting Julian even as the doctor held him upright.  Gasping, they stumbled further ashore, making it only halfway to the chair before Julian had to rest.  When Garak laid a palm on Julian's head, he felt feverish.  His skin was clammy from the sea, and his hands were bunched together into a single fist.

    “Julian.  Julian.  Julian,”  Garak found himself saying, again and again.  “Julian.  Julian.”

    Finally, the human looked back up at him. (His eyes today were nearly sea green, Garak noted.) For a second, the flicker of recognition was there, and then it retreated like the tide.  

    Garak held his soaking wet body, while above them the shorebird cried out in its thin voice.  Later, when he called Kelas, he claimed his face was still wet from the sea.  Kelas merely corrected, “From the ordeal,” and neither of them could bring themselves to say more.


	3. Chapter 3

    “What is wrong with his hands?”  Garak whispered.  “I’ve been trying to pry them open since yesterday, but it would appear some of his strength has returned:  they won’t budge.”

    Kelas bit his lip, trying to keep the worry off his face.  “I was going to ask you.  Medically speaking, there’s no reason for it.”

    Kelas had arrived late last night, nearly 2 days after the incident, having left the city immediately after Garak messaged him. Garak hadn’t requested his presence, but Kelas insisted that the district couldn’t afford its only minister to catch ill while on vacation.

    “I hate this,”  Garak said.  “I didn’t think anything could be worse than the waiting, than the hoping, but I hate this.”

    Kelas bowed his head, long hair whipping in the wind.  His medical instincts searched for a diagnosis.  “Are you sure he has made no movement or sound since?”

    “I’m certain.  I haven’t left his side until now.”   _I never should have at all._

    “What was it he had said?  ‘Mae?’ “  Parmak asked.

    “ ‘May,’ “ Garak corrected.

    “Your Standard is better than mine, Elim.  Is it a clue?  A code?”

    Garak waved an arm to one side and began pacing in the sand outside the cabin door.  (For this conversation, they kept it firmly shut—who knew what Julian’s ears could hear, if they were quickened to listen again.)  “If it is, it is the worst one I’ve ever received.  ‘May’ means a myriad of things in Standard, and more if you account for all the hundreds of thousands of Terran languages.”  He stopped, shaking his head.  “In that manner, as in all, they are such a disorderly people.  ‘May’ could mean ‘beautiful’ or ‘sibling’ or ‘mine.’   In Julian’s favored language and dialect, the options don’t get much narrower.  It could be a name, an old Terran month, a type of flower, a species of fly, or…”  Garak paused, licking the bitterness out of his throat.

    “Or?”  Kelas’ eyes were soft, not prodding.

    “Or a request for permission.”  Garak didn’t dare meet Kelas’ gaze.

    Kelas inhaled sharply.  “Elim, Julian wasn’t trying to drown himself.  He wasn’t asking to leave you.”

    Garak glared up at him.  “Don’t tell me something you don’t believe, Kelas! You are no good at it. I’ve heard people beg for escape before—Bajoran, Cardassian."   _Myself._   "It doesn’t change much, no matter who’s saying it.”

    “I know—I was one of them saying it!” Kelas burst out.  “And I’m telling you, that’s not how it’s done!”

    “He never liked to be conventional,” Garak said.

    For once, Kelas was at a loss.  He stared out at the tide rising towards the cabin.  “Why don’t you call that old friend of yours—Lt. Dax, wasn’t it?  She knows Julian and Standard better than—”

    “Ms. Dax,” Garak snapped, “is exploring the Gamma Quadrant currently.  Any message to her would surely be tracked by the Section, and they’d know his location and his condition.”

    “I was going to say,” Kelas demurred, “that she knows Julian and Standard better than _I_ do.  And though you are many things, Elim, you are not a doctor.  While a torturer is nearly a psychologist”— that earned him a small laugh, and he smiled as he continued—”it comes at it, as it were, from the wrong end.”

    “No, Kelas,”  Garak said, turning to face the sun.  That evening it was low and red and seemed to pulse heat in time to the waves.  He closed his eyes, letting the heat flush his face and seep into his scales.  “We are alone in this.  There are no higher powers that we can call upon.”

    “Then tell me more about what happened.” Kelas grabbed his arm and began walking in a loop about the cabin.  Reluctantly, Garak followed.

    “Kelas, I want nothing more, but I told you all there is to know.”

    “This—this ‘Mally.’ What is it?”

    “Molly,” Garak corrected.  “A Terran name, typically.  The only one I’ve met is Molly O’Brien, the daughter of Julian’s best friend back on the station.”

    “Then why would he declare her a ‘hideous thing?’ Or was that lost in translation as well?”

    “No, that much is right.  That much I’m sure of.”  Garak cursed under his breath.  “If only I had Julian’s hearing!  I might’ve known all he said before the sea breeze swept it away.  If only I hadn't been such a fool and had stayed close, I might have—”

    Kelas stepped in front of him, grabbing his shoulders.  “Elim.  Stop.  You need to calm down.  Blaming yourself isn't helping Julian."

    “You sound like him when you’re lecturing,” Garak muttered.  “I hate it.”

    Kelas pursed his lips, then suddenly a gleam entered his eye.  "What do you do if you can’t extrapolate from the previous data?”

    Garak stared at him.  _This isn't helping your cause._ "Is now really the time?"

    “What do you do?”

    “We didn’t have data extrapolation in the Order, Kelas!  Only contingency plans.”

    Parmak gave him an exasperated glance and walked to the cabin door. “You collect more from the specimen.”


	4. Chapter 4

    The cabin didn’t feel any less claustrophobic with three people in it, but Garak knew the tide was too unruly to trust the outside.  At least the stench of old salt and fish was diminished.  It was replaced by the faintest traces of Garak’s garden, the scent of which still clung to Kelas’ traveling cloak.

    Julian was yet again staring out the window in a pose so familiar it rankled.  The only changes were the view and his hands, which lay in a single fist on his lap.

    Kelas went to the replicator; Garak sat beside Julian.

    “Tarkalean tea, extra sweet,” Kelas requested.  “And two mugs of rokassa juice.”  There was a hum.

    _“...Rokassa juice, Garak?”_

Both Cardassians were instantly at Bashir’s side.  His face was so impassive it was hard to believe it had moved at all.

    “Did he—did I just—”

    “No, no, I heard it too,”  Kelas said.

    Garak turned to Bashir, kneeling in front of him.  “How did you know?” he asked.

    _“The odor is unmistakable.”_

    Again—barely a hint of breath, barely a twitch of the lips, and no movement of the eyes.  Still the phrase hung between them, thin as a cobweb.

    “So it is,” Garak breathed.

    Silence hung in the air and dissolved their words.  

    Kelas set down the mugs and joined Garak on the floor, crossing his legs beneath him.  “Who is Molly, Julian?” he asked, voice light.

    Both Cardassians had to lean forward to hear the answer.

    “Comings?” Kelas turned to Garak, confused, but his partner was smiling.  It was the first relaxed smile he had seen in months.  Garak’s eyes never left Julian’s face.

    “Turn your translator off, Kelas,”  Garak said.  “He said Cummings:  an old Terran poet.”   _One of Julian’s favorites, after that dreadfully-catching Shakespeare and the more-tolerable Dickinson._

    Julian stirred, left hand uncurling from his fist.  It lay, palm up, empty on his lap; the fingers were limp and still.  Then he spoke, voice hoarse and face blank. As the syllables fell the scent of salt seemed to grow sharper in the room:

 

    “ _maggie and milly and molly and may_

_went down to the beach (to play one day)_

 

_and maggie discovered a shell that sang_

_so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and_

 

    _milly befriended a stranded star_

_whose rays five languid fingers were;_

 

_and molly was chased by a horrible thing_

_which raced sideways while blowing bubbles; and_

 

_may came home with a smooth round stone_

_as small as a world and as large as alone.”_

 

On the last word, Julian’s voice cracked like glass shattering back to sand.  Abruptly he leaned forward, groping blindly until his hands met Garak’s.  They froze, palm to palm, eyes locked, and Garak felt something warm, smooth, and inert nestling between them.  Both of Julian’s hands closed over his. Garak didn’t know which one of them was shaking, but they shuddered in time to the syllables:

 

    _“for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)_

_it’s always ourselves we find at sea.”_

 

Sea green and brown eyes engulfed him for what felt like centuries; then they flickered to Kelas.  Once Julian knew he had their attention, he whispered, “Thank you.”  

    Julian’s gaze met Garak’s again, and he smiled, the one movement wiping away the past months like a wave dismissing footprints in the sand.  The human’s breath shook, ragged, and settled into the cadence of sleep.  

    Minutes passed untroubled before Julian's hands fell from Garak’s, which hadn’t felt warmer in years.

    Kelas peered at Julian.  Satisfied that he was healthy, he turned to Garak, whose hands were now cupped in a gentle fist.  “What did he give you, Elim?”

    Garak opened his palms.  Nestled inside was a stone, small and round as a sparrow’s egg.  Its visage had been smoothed by sand and salt water until it gleamed.  Its scale-gray grains were whorled with light cerulean sparks.  Held in the dying sunlight, it glowed a gentle turquoise at its heart.  Garak gripped the stone tightly until he could feel his own pulse breaking over its surface and Julian’s body heat trickling into his wrists.

    He took a deep breath; for once, the cabin tasted of home.  “A promise,” he said.  

    Kelas mouthed the words, _“as small as a world and as large as alone”._ Aloud he whispered, “May.  He remembered as May, but _his_ stone looks almost like a Cardassian face.”

     Garak was distant, only half-listening.  “Tell me, Kelas, have you ever heard Terran poetry before?”

    “No,”  Kelas said, awe tinging his voice.  “It sounded like a river, or like the sea crashing on stones.”

    “ ‘ _I contain multitudes,’ ”_ Garak mused.  He added quietly,  “And I think he just found them all again, scattered in the retreat of the tide.”

    Kelas looked into Garak’s eyes, which had returned to Julian’s face. Then he looked at Bashir, who now seemed somehow younger and calmer than in his previous slumbers. He couldn’t help thinking that Elim had found himself as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took awhile! I was trying to minimize the sappiness, which was time-consuming, and then decided that some sap was unavoidable under the circumstances. Thank you for sticking with me!

**Author's Note:**

> Any constructive criticism is welcome!


End file.
